1. Technical Field
The disclosure contained herein generally relates to a method for providing an open-text search service of access controlled information sources over a public data network. More specifically, the embodiments disclosed herein relate to open-text searching of information sources over a communications network such as the internet, where the source materials searched are owned by a library and the information resulting from a search query may be viewed on a user device without copyright violation.
2. Description of Related Art
The amount of readily available information on public data networks has increased exponentially for the last five decades. As the amount of available data grows, the problem of managing the information becomes more difficult. Companies like Google™ and Yahoo™ have recently come out with search engines that are accessible over a communications network such as the internet. These search engines allow for multimedia and full-text searching of information sources that have been scanned and indexed. These information sources include sound, image and video files, as well as books, magazines, periodicals, trade journals, newspapers, and almost any source that exists in printed form. One drawback to this publicly available searching is the inability to access the full-text results of the search. Efforts to make this information available to the general public via the internet have been thwarted by publishers and authors who understandably do not want their intellectual property given away for free.
Access to materials at a public library is unrestricted, but the search options are limited. Searching for information sources at a library is typically restricted to the information on a card catalog entry. This information may include the title, author, subject, or call number. A system and method for full-text or multimedia searching of all of the information sources at a library is currently not available, but would greatly improve a library patron's ability to locate relevant resource materials.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method to improve a user's ability to locate resource materials within a library. More specifically, what is needed is a method which allows a user to perform a full-text or multimedia search on the information sources within a library and gain access to the sources located during the open-text search.
The disclosure contained herein describes solutions to one or more of the problems described above.